YOW Ottawa

How deep the YOW board really is

The table above says where a courier can fly from YOW. This reads the same 45 destinations back for the questions a dispatcher asks second: how much of the board rests on one airline, how much of it runs less than daily, whether the return leg is as thick as the outbound, what the clock here does to a Gulf working day and which of the destinations shut at night, all of it computed on 2026-09-07 from AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics.

• 23of the 45 destinations are flown by one airline
• 20destinations run less than once a day
• 11destinations have four or more departures a day
• 48.9%of the destinations name Porter Airlines, the largest presence here

Who holds the departures at YOW

30 airlines appear on the YOW board and they do not hold it evenly. Porter Airlines is on 22 of the 45 destinations, 48.9 per cent of them, and on 6 of those it is the only airline flying the sector. The destinations it appears on carry 88.1 of the 123.1 departures a day this airport files, though other airlines fly some of the same sectors, so read that as reach rather than as a share of the aircraft.

The next largest presence is Air Canada on 11 destinations. 12 of the 30 airlines at YOW appear on a single destination each, which is the long tail every airport carries, and none of it is a rebooking option when the sector you need is the one that fell over.

An airport held this tightly is quick to book and slow to recover: with 22 of the 45 destinations on one airline, the second aircraft on a YOW sector is usually another Porter Airlines aircraft, and when there is not one the desk is looking at another airport rather than another airline. That is why the alternate airports listed above matter more at YOW than the destination count does.

How much of the YOW board is daily

Of the 45 destinations, 25 are flown at least once a day and 20 are not, 10 of them running once a week or less. The median destination on the YOW board is flown about once a day.

An average of 0.14 flights a day is the schedule statistic, and it is worth translating it before anything is promised to anybody: YOW to Yellowknife (YZF) is about one a week, so a missed departure there is not a delay of hours, it is the next slot.

The five busiest destinations carry 58.6 of the 123.1 departures a day, 47.6 per cent of the whole board. The other 40 destinations are spread widely enough that a courier who misses the first departure at YOW usually has somewhere else to look on the same board.

Destination	Country	The only airline on it	Flights a week	km	Routing
Burlington BTV	the United States	NetJets Aviation	1	220	plan this
Kitchener YKF	Canada	PHX	1	428	plan this
Morristown MMU	the United States	AirSprint	1	513	plan this
Pittsburgh PIT	the United States	JRE	1	653	plan this
Ponta Delgada PDL	Portugal	Azores Airlines	1	4,175	plan this
Rochester ROC	the United States	Sky Quest	1	292	plan this
Saint John YSJ	Canada	Novajet	1	764	plan this
Savannah SAV	the United States	NetJets Aviation	1	1,543	plan this
White Plains HPN	the United States	Reliant Air	1	499	plan this
Yellowknife YZF	Canada	Air North	1	3,100	plan this

The ten destinations out of YOW where one airline holds the sector and files fewer than seven departures a week, with the weekly figure taken as the average daily rate multiplied by seven rather than as a fixed timetable. 6 further destinations sit in the same position and are listed in the board above.

The way back from YOW

The desk holds the return direction for 21 of the 45 destinations, and a courier plans the way back on those figures rather than on the outbound. On one of them the return into YOW runs thinner than the outbound by more than a quarter. The widest gap is Edmonton (YEG) at 3.4 out a day against 2.4 back.

It runs the other way as well: Boston (BOS) files 3.1 a day back into YOW against 2.1 outbound, which is the shape that strands a courier at this end rather than at the far end.

The clock at YOW

YOW keeps America/Toronto time, eight hours behind Dubai in summer and nine hours behind in winter, because the clock here moves and the Gulf clock does not.

When it is 09:00 on a Dubai working morning it is 01:00 at YOW, so a nine to six day at each end overlaps for an hour. That is a narrow window for a signature, a customs query or an authority to release, and it is the reason a consignment for YOW is briefed the day before rather than on the morning it flies.

The night at YOW

3 of the destinations from here carry a documented night restriction of their own, which is a departure time question at this end rather than an arrival problem at the other.

Into Paris (CDG) the door shuts at 00:00 local, so the last departure from YOW that lands inside it leaves around 10:41, on a modelled block of 7h 19m. Into London (LHR) the door shuts at 23:30 local, so the last departure from YOW that lands inside it leaves around 11:34, on a modelled block of 6h 56m. Into London (LGW) the door shuts at 23:30 local, so the last departure from YOW that lands inside it leaves around 11:31, on a modelled block of 6h 59m. Those three departure times out of YOW are worked backwards from the published window with the block time model this site uses everywhere, 720 to 880 km an hour by sector length with thirty minutes on the ground, so they are arithmetic rather than a timetable and the desk checks the published departure before it promises the landing.

Where YOW turns up on the rest of this site

The airport also sits behind the Canada country desk, which sets out the customs practice, the working week and the road legs behind this airport.

The site publishes 4 airport pair pages that start or end at YOW, each with the distance, the block time, the carriers on the sector and a door to door clock. The busiest are Ottawa to Montreal (YUL), Ottawa to Halifax (YHZ) and Ottawa to Calgary (YYC).

Six courier postings name YOW as the airport a courier here flies from: Ottawa, Kingston and Repentigny.

To price a movement rather than read the board, the route calculator opens with YOW already set as the origin, and it works out the flying time, the distance and the delivery hour for any of the 45 destinations above.